The federal government document that tens of millions of Americans love to hate is scheduled to get a facelift.

The IRS plans changes to Form 1040, which most taxpayers use to report their federal taxes, the agency said yesterday. Taxpayers could begin using a revised form as soon as the 2009 tax filing season, said IRS senior spokesman Terry Lemons.

"What we are shooting for is a form that is simpler and easier to use for taxpayers," said Lemons, confirming mentions of the anticipated revision in a recent Government Accountability Office audit and a report by Tax Analysts, a non-profit organization that tracks tax issues.

As envisioned by the IRS, an as-yet-undetermined number of less-frequently used lines dealing with adjustments to income, credits, taxes and payments will be removed from the cover page of Form 1040 and relocated to a new Schedule O. That would simplify the current 77-line form, and free up space for any future tax reporting changes ordered by Congress and the White House.

Lemons said the changes are still evolving, explaining that "it's still really early in the (planning) process."

Although Form 1040 typically undergoes virtually unnoticed revisions from year to year, it hasn't been subjected to a major overhaul since 1977 — when the IRS scrapped a two-column format at the top of the tax-filing form and moved the signature line from the cover page to the final entry.

Lemons stressed that the changes being planned are expected to be less radical. Taxpayers "are not going to get a surprise when the new form comes in the mailbox," he said.

Although the IRS tentatively plans to introduce the changes for the 2009 tax filing season, the start date could be delayed by agency funding issues and other logistics, Lemons said.

Approximately 135 million federal tax returns are filed on Form 1040 or one of its variants each year, making it the IRS' most frequently-used filing document. However, the filers who submitted more than 73 million federal tax returns electronically in 2006 typically typed data into computer-generated boxes without ever actually seeing the Form 1040 that underlies the software.